Pig Out

Continuing in the world of leftovers this week I cooked a slow roast pork shoulder joint and I made it last for 2 days as other leftover deliciousness.



The first day was Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's lovely slow roast pork. Here is the recipe:

I only used a 1.8kg joint, as there were only two of us

1 tbsp fennel seeds
Finely grated zest of 2 small lemons
3 tbsp finely chopped parsley
1 tsp freshly chopped thyme leaves
Flaky sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 tbsp rapeseed oil
3-4 sprigs fresh thyme
2-3 bay leaves
1 boned shoulder of pork (about 2.5kg) – score the skin about 1cm apart (or get the butcher to do it)

Heat the oven to 220C/425F/gas mark 7. With a pestle and mortar, roughly bash the fennel seeds. Mix them with the lemon zest, parsley, thyme leaves, a tablespoon of flaky sea salt and two teaspoons of black pepper. Mix into a paste with the oil.

If the pork is rolled and tied, remove the string. Place the joint skin-side down on a chopping board and rub two-thirds of the fennel mixture all over the meat. Turn it over and rub the rest into the skin, pushing it into the cuts. Rub a little extra sea salt into the skin, too. Roll the meat back up and tie with kitchen string in two or three places.

Lay the thyme sprigs and bay leaves in a roasting tray (use one that's not too big, so the juices don't burn), put the pork on top skin side-up, and roast for 30 minutes, until the skin has started to puff up and begun to look like crackling. Turn the heat to 140C/285F/gas mark 1, and roast for a further four to five hours, until the meat is very tender.

Turn the oven up to 190C/375F/ gas mark 5, and cook for a further 20 minutes or so, until the crackling crisps up. Transfer to a warm dish, rest for 20 minutes, then carve.

I served it with his amazing lemony potatoes, I only did enough potatoes for the two of us, the below recipe is for 6 people.

2kg King Edward or other roasting potatoes, peeled and cut into wedges
Juice of 1 lemon
200ml chicken stock or white wine
2 small lemons, cut into wedges
8-10 garlic cloves, unpeeled and bashed
3-4 sprigs fresh rosemary
2-3 bay leaves
150ml rapeseed or olive oil (or fat from the pork joint)
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
3-4 tbsp finely chopped parsley

Heat the oven to 200C/400F/gas mark 6. In a large bowl, mix the spuds with the lemon juice, stock or wine, lemon wedges, garlic, rosemary, bay leaves and oil or fat, and season.

Transfer to a roasting tin and cook for 50 minutes to an hour, shaking the tin a couple of times while they cook – they should be golden on the outside and fluffy in the middle. Sprinkle on a bit more salt and squeeze over the juice from a couple of the hot lemon wedges (serve the other wedges with the potatoes). Toss with parsley and serve.

Living on the Lamb

You may have noticed I love leftovers. Not the boring reheated meal leftovers, but using something leftover to create something new and exciting. In fact I think that I'm more likely to experiment with leftovers, with flavours and other unusual ingredients because you haven't laid down a fortune in money for one meal. This is the premise of my beloved Diana Henry and her book Food from Plenty. This week I cooked my first ever roast lamb. It was a D.H. recipe from her book Cook Simple called Normandy Roast Lamb with Cider here is the recipe my adjustments are in italics as usual!

Serves 6 unless you're making loads more meals with the leftovers!
Leg of Lamb 1.8kg
2 garlic cloves cut into slivers, I'm not the worlds biggest fan of garlic, and we didn't have any in the house so I didn't bother
2 sprigs of thyme
55g butter, softened
Salt and pepper
225ml of dry cider
A good slug of calvados or brandy I actually used masala as it was to hand.
575ml of chicken or lamb stock
200g Creme fraiche

Preheat the oven to gas mark 7

Trim any horrid bits off the lamb, then make incisions all over the lamb and stuff with a sliver of garlic and bits of thyme.  Rub the butter over season well and pop in the oven in a roasting tray for 15 mins. Then roast for another 50 mins on gas mark 5, until the juices run clear.

Put the lamb on a heated platter cover with foil and towels to insulate,  for 15 mins so it can rest.

Pour the juices from the roasting tin into a jug and put the roasting tin on a medium heat  and deglaze with the cider and calvados/brandy. Boil until reduced by two thirds, add the stock and cooking juices, reduce again by two thirds, then add the Creme fraiche. Boil until slightly syrupy.
Serve with flageolet beans cooked with a knob of butter, parsley and lemon and salt and pepper.


Leftover day 1

Using the leftover sauce and slices of the lamb I made a sort of stroganoff. Frying off an onion, adding slices of lamb, and the sauce and cooking through until piping hit and serving with creamy mashed potatoes and peas.

Leftover day 2
Strip the leg of all the remaining meat and chop up finely until it's sort of minced using about 3 handfuls of this minced up lamb I made a Greek-ish feast. 
Fry off in some olive oil, ground cumin, about 1tsp with 1 tsp of chilli flakes, 1 tsp ground corriander and 1 tsp of smoked paprika. Once fragrant add 1 chopped red onion and cook until softened. Add the lamb, a splash of red wine and a bit of tomato purée. You don't want to create a sauce, just a a moist mix of the meat. Serve with houmous, a Greek salad, pitta bread and Greek yoghurt. 

To make the Greek salad, my version

Finely chop a red onion, and cut up tomatoes into chunks season with salt and pepper and a drizzle of olive oil and some dried oregano. Leave to mingle. When ready to eat, chop up half a cucumber into chunks and about half a pack of feta, mix together and serve, put olives in if you wish.

We still have enough minced lamb left to make 2 shepherds pies for two people, obviously a whole leg of lamb for two people seems extravagant but we have eaten so well from it!

Enjoy!

Scoffing Scones

For some reason or another I always fancy scones and other such delights when I'm about to watch the rugby. I have no idea why the seem to work, but for me they are somehow inextricably linked. Unfortunately I am absolutely terrible at making scones, they are always rock solid flat and claggy, so this morning I decided to try again. After looking at lots of different recipes, I came back to good old Delia Smith, she of the step by step guide of how to cook pretty much anything. To be honest it wasn't just that Delia is good with the step by step, hers was the only recipe of which I had all the ingredients and even then I substituted buttermilk for milk as I didn't want to venture out in the English drizzle.

So here is the recipe:

Preheat the oven to Gas Mark 7

225g Self Raising Flour, sieved
75g Butter, at room temperature, chopped up
40g Golden Caster Sugar
1 Large egg beaten with 2 tbsp Buttermilk

Rub the butter and flour together until it resembles breadcrumbs, mix in the sugar.

Make a well in the centre of the bowl and add the egg mixture a little at a time using a knife to incorporate the flour. Once it has started to come together use your hands to keep on incorporating the mixture, if it is too dry add a little more buttermilk.

Once it has become a smooth ball of dough place on a floured surface and roll out to 1inch thick. This is very important if you roll them out to thinly you will get rubbish scones. Use a cutter about 2inch in diameter and cut out the scones, bring the scraps together and re rolling to get the last ones out. I got 9, Delia got 10.

Put on a floured baking sheet and brush with a bit of buttermilk, put in the oven for 10 mins until golden and risen.

Cool and scoff with jam, butter and cream



Enjoy!

Cheap as chicken

I love a roast chicken, there is something completely satisfying about seeing it, all gleaming and golden out of the oven, but sometimes I want to make it less of a traditional roast, I want different flavours. This week I made Corfu roast chicken, by the ever present Diana Henry.


Stuff half a lemon inside the chicken, season the outside of the bird, squeeze over half a lemon, olive oil and half a tablespoon of cayenne pepper. Chop about 900g of sweet potatoes into chunks and 2 red onions into wedges mix with some more olive oil another half tablespoon of cayenne pepper. Roast  the chicken 20mins per 500g at gas mark 5, plus an extra ten mins. When the chicken has 45 mins left, toss I the veggies, I actually added some peppers to the mix too, as I couldn't be bothered to cook any other veggies. Check it is actually cooked, make sure the juices run clear, then take the bird out and cover with tin foil and rest for 10 mins. 

Carve up and devour. 

As there were only two of us eating there was a lot of leftovers, which are my favourite thing. I looked in the fridge and found half a chorizo sausage, so I made a quick stew like this:

1 can of chopped tomatoes
1 red onion
About 100g chorizo sausage
50g leftover chicken in chunks
1 can of cannellini beans, or any white beans
1 pack of baby sweet peppers or 1 large pepper
Smoked paprika

Chop the onion, peel the skin off the chorizo and chop into chunks. Put a pan on to heat and add the chorizo, you don't need to add oil, the chorizo is quite fatty and all the golden spiced oil will come out of there. When the oil has started to come out of the chorizo add the onion and cook until softened. Add the pepper and cook for about 5 mins add the chicken. Add the tomatoes, and the white beans that have been drained and rinsed and cook until it is hot through. I think the longer the better! Serve with good bread and enjoy! You can see a picture on my instagram feed @kategwilliam !!

We still had leftover chicken! 

Last night we had chicken, bacon and leek pie. YUM! Very easy, even easier if you don't make the pastry. We made shortcrust pastry, I only know the imperial measurements for this, so 

8oz plain flour
4oz fat (we did 2oz butter 2oz lard)
About 2tbsp of cold water

Put the flour in a bowl and chop the fat into it, use a knife to chop the fat and flour together. Once it looks breadcrumb-ish make a well in the centre and add 1 tbsp cold water and mix the flour into it using the knife, add the next bit of water and bring it together until it forms a ball. You want it to be a bit crumbly, but not completely falling apart. Wrap in cling film and put in the fridge to rest. Which gives you time to make the filling! 

We had cooked the bacon earlier in the day for sandwiches, but a pie is a much better use, so cook the bacon, about 8 rashers, chop it up into inch pieces.

In a bowl break up the leftover chicken into pieces, chop 1 leek finely, put into the bowl. Add the bacon. I made a cheats sauce, 3 tbsp of Philadelphia cheese, mix with milk until smooth, add a teaspoon of Dijon mustard add any herbs you may have lying around, we had some tarragon so I chopped that into the sauce. Pour it into the bowl stir through put the mixture into a pie dish. Remember to put a pie funnel in!

Roll out the pastry, wet the top of the pie dish, place the pastry on top and squeeze the edges down. Trim off the excess. Place in the oven gas mark 5 for 30mins.


Enjoy!

Maxed out Mexican

I love Mexican, authentic or otherwise as much as the next person, in fact I could probably eat Mexican food every day. I didn't want a chilli con carne or other red meat dishes, I wanted chicken, juicy chicken breast with sour cream and avocado and cheese, but I didn't want fajitas, I wanted some sauce, the search began. It ended pretty quickly when I found Thomasina Miers' recipe Spicy Chicken Tinga Tacos here. It was perfect, pretty simple which is always excellent. I didn't have left overs for once so I used chicken breast pieces and poached in water first. I also didn't have any Chipotles en adobo, but my local supermarket did have chipotle chilli paste which I assumed would be a good substitute and as I haven't found the chipotles en adobo to try to compare the flavour, I shall of course report back when I do. I served with flour tortillas as I couldn't get corn ones, rice, cheese, sour cream and very finely sliced red onion that I had left to macerate in lime juice. The red onion is amazing, trust me it will zing up any Mexican food.

The best part about this meal was of course the leftovers. I used the leftover chicken mixture to make my version of enchiladas, so two flour tortillas, spoon in the chicken mixture fold in the ends and roll up, place in an ovenproof dish.

Preheat the oven to Gas Mark 6. Meanwhile make the spicy tomato sauce

I can of chopped tomatoes
1 tsp cayenne pepper
1 tsp smoked paprika
3 tsp chilli powder
1tbsp of cocoa powder
1/2 a cup of water

Put the spices and cocoa in a pan and over a low heat warm them through until they start to become aromatic, then add the water and stir until you have a thick paste.
Add the tomatoes and cook until hot through, the longer you let it mingle together.

Pour the sauce over the rolled up tortillas and add grated cheese. Put in the oven and cook for about 25-30mins. Serve with avocado and sour cream.


Enjoy

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